SXSW highlights: Snowden speaks, Facebook’s F8 returns

Security and privacy were key themes at the ongoing South By Southwest conference where whistleblower Edward Snowden spoke before a receptive Austin crowd on the threat posed by government data-collection programs run by the National Security Agency.

“The NSA is setting fire to the future of Internet,” Snowden said from Russia where he lives in exile in a video-conference chat with Christopher Soghoian and Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union.

He argued that instead of protecting the public interest, the NSA’s spying operations have ended up hurting national security.

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“We rely on the ability to trust our communications,” he said. “Without that, we don’t have anything.”

Speaking with an image of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution in the background, Snowden defended his decision to expose the NSA operation, saying, “I saw that the Constitution was being violated on a massive scale.” Check out a recap of the video chat live blog here.)

Facebook
/quotes/zigman/9962609/delayed/quotes/nls/fbFBalso made news at the SXSW gathering by announcing that it is bringing back the F8 conference for developers. The last time Facebook held an F8 gathering was in 2011 when Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the social network’s Timeline feature.

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